The winter sun had set clear, without a cloud to fleck the heavens, and when I went below at midnight, leaving the starboard watch in possession of the deck, the cold, bright stars were out, twinkling in the frosty sky; while a capful of wind was sending us merrily along. Six bells had just struck as I sprang up the gangway, and the night was still clear above, but, casting my eye hurriedly around, I saw a bank of mist, close on the starboard bow, driving rapidly for us, and covering sea and sky in that quarter, in a shadowy veil. The men were already at their posts, and as my watch came tumbling on deck each member of it sprang to aid his messmates, so that in less time than I have taken to describe it, we had got the light sails in, had kept away the schooner a few points, and were ready to let every thing go by the run, if necessary, as soon as the squall struck us. Nor did we wait long for the unwelcome visiter. Scarcely had our craft been made snug before the squall burst on us in a whirlwind of snow, hail, rain, and wind, against whose fury it was, for the moment, impossible to stand. As the gale struck the schooner, she heeled over until her decks were fearfully inclined, while the tall masts bent like rushes in the tempest, and the spars strained and cracked as if they were unequal to the torture. For a moment I thought that all was over, and clutching a rope I made ready to spring to windward as soon as she should capsize; but after a second of breathless uncertainty she slightly recovered herself, and dashed forward as if she had been shot like an arrow from the bow, her whole forward part buried in the foam that boiled around her bows, and flew high up the mast in showers. All this time the wind was shrieking through the hamper with an intonation like that of a tortured fiend; while the hail and snow driving horizontally against the men fairly pinned them to their stations. The ropes soon became coated with ice; while the cold grew intense, so that it was with difficulty we could get the fore and main sails reefed. At length, however, we stripped her to the fight, when she rose until nearly level, bearing gallantly up against the gale. Meantime, the snow fell thick and fast, covering the decks with its white carpeting, and dressing the shrouds, booms, and the weather side of the masts in the garments of the grave. “Whew! what a flurry! Old Davy himself has laid hold of the bellows to-night,” said the captain of the starboard watch, stooping before the gale and turning his back to windward; “why it blows as if it would whiff our little craft away, like a feather, before it. By the gods, but that bucket full of hail that has just rattled on my shoulders was enough to have felled an ox! It must be as black as the ace of spades to windward—hark! how the infernal sleet sings in the rigging.”